The resistance both in the Transvaal and in Natal of the South African Kommandos was fanatical — but it was a fanaticism tempered with cool measuring of the military odds. The Afrikaaners fought with a ferocity which shocked and dismayed both the cynical mercenaries and the dedicated guerrillas of the invading forces. They were not always successful.
“2/Lt Pieter Van der Horst had just finished setting up his first ambush. He had received information over the radio two hours earlier that a column of some fifty mixed Mozambique and Zimbabwe guerrillas, supported by two T-34 tanks, were expected to reach his patrol area about now, and it had taken him every bit of the time available to get ready. In his platoon he had thirty-two men, four French medium machine guns, two anti-tank launchers of the Karl Gustav type and two 81 mm Malaysian mortars. They were completely mobile in eight Japanese Landrover-type vehicles and had rations for a week. Two Landrovers with trailers were separately loaded with ammunition and petrol. His men carried 100 rounds each. He had chosen a disused farm which offered excellent cover and superb ambush positions. Through it the main dusty track ran on towards Lesotho. The ambush was laid out over a distance of 300 metres: the first killing group of ten men with the anti-tank weapons and two machine-guns at the front, or southern, end; the rear group with mortars and two machine-guns at the entrance to, or northern part of, the ambush; and his own HQ and support group in the centre with some ten men and plentiful supplies of grenades. His own HQ men had the flamethrowers. Everyone was out of sight, the anti-tank and anti-personnel mines laid, the detonating charges ready for distracting or deceiving the enemy.
Van der Horst’s radio crackled. It was a helicopter pilot reporting. “Column now within two miles your position, two tanks leading; remainder of force in two parties, approximate strength twenty-plus each party. Some carrying supplies. No heavy weapons.” Van der Horst gave swift and low confirmatory orders through his walkie-talkie to the two NCOs in charge of killer groups. It was to be done broadly as planned. First enemy party with tanks to be allowed to proceed unmolested to Point A; then as second enemy party reached Point B or on his order or by his opening fire, this latter party to be destroyed by machine-gun and automatic rifle fire; immediately fire to be opened by own rear group, leading group to detonate anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, engage enemy tanks with recoilless launchers and destroy enemy foot with machine-guns; his own group to use flamethrowers against tanks. All enemy weapons and ammunition to be secured. If detonating charges required for deception — under his control. If for any reason enemy column does not enter ambush, further orders on radio.
When they came in sight, the guerrilla forces did not appear to be expecting any opposition. As they advanced, they barely bothered to adopt tactical formation at all, but trudged along behind the tanks, weapons slung over shoulders, talking, chewing, laughing, the gap between the two parties a mere 100 metres. As he watched them coming, Van der Horst was thinking that his plan should work.
As a plan, it was good. But military plans, as von Moltke observed, rarely survive contact with the enemy. In this case the seemingly unwary enemy suddenly took the whole affair into their own hands. When the guerrilla column was no more than 800 metres away from the ambush, the two tanks deployed to either side of the track and opened fire, first with machine-guns, then with high-explosive shells, on the derelict farm buildings. They were well out of range of Van der Horst’s rocket launchers. The guerrilla foot soldiers rapidly dispersed on either side of the tanks and went to earth. Van der Horst gave a quick order over his radio: “Keep in cover and return fire with mortars and machine-guns. Leading group at five minutes’ notice to move back to get behind them.”
The tanks kept up a steady fire and seemed quite impervious to the machine guns now engaging them. Meanwhile, to Van der Horst’s concern, the enemy guerrillas seemed to be crawling through the bush to the north of them in an obvious attempt to outflank his own position. It would be foolhardy to try to outface tank fire and allow his force to be pinned down while the guerrillas crept ever closer. He still had one advantage over the enemy — speed. He spoke into the radio again. “Cancel last order. Rear group prepare to mount in Landrovers and move south in fifteen minutes; leading group prepare to give covering fire; my group will follow rear group, covered by leading group, and we will leapfrog back to agreed rendezvous Charlie. Maximum covering fire throughout move. Mortar fire to switch now to Hill 102. Leading group to withdraw when my group established at Charlie. Move on my orders.”
From a concealed position of great strength, with the expectation of gaining both surprise and success, Van der Horst was obliged to resort to defence, evasion and retreat. And all because he had no anti-tank weapons of sufficient range. It was a lesson well learned, and would not have to be relearned, as before long his unit and others like it would be equipped with the longer-range Milan-type anti-tank guided missiles, also now coming in from Japan. And the helicopters would have a new missile too. For the time being, it was necessary to run away in order to fight another day. After all they had plenty of space. And plenty of time. It was usually shortage of those two commodities that lost wars. Meanwhile Van der Horst, noticing with satisfaction that none of his men had been hit, used a little time to put a respectable space between his command and those T-34 tanks. “[7]
Even when the invading columns from Mozambique did meet with some success in their advances, they threw away their advantage by their savagery to the black inhabitants they claimed to have come to deliver. The Cuban proxy leaders of the FRELIMO bands were men to whom the death or mutilation of wholly innocent men and women was of no moment. Such was the short-sightedness and vindictiveness of the invading army’s leaders that they were ruthless where they should have been conciliatory, and — in the case of their own members who revelled in excesses — tolerant where they should have been stern.
The invasion from Mozambique was held, but CASPA would not lightly give up the battle. Guerrilla forces from Botswana were advancing deep into enemy territory, reinforced by incursions from Zimbabwe. But what was rapidly becoming clear was that South Africa was holding on.
Long before it was all over, the USSR had wholly ceased to be in control of anything that was happening either in the Middle East or in Southern Africa. Orders from Moscow, growing in confusion and inadequacy in the last few days of August 1985, had, by the end of the month, virtually ceased.
The United States now faced a huge new problem. This was not wholly unforeseen, but in the event it was greater, and came to a head sooner, than had been expected. Very considerable forces of all arms of the Soviet Union, disposing of immense masses of war material, with hordes of technicians, advisers and civilian operatives of every sort, were now spread over vast areas with no coherent purpose and no further reason for being where they were. Some units and formations went on fighting, for a while at least, wherever they happened to be, to whatever local end seemed to their commanders sensible. Others sought the earliest opportunity to surrender to the nearest American headquarters, at any level. One startled US captain signalled to his superiors that he had at his disposal two Soviet generals, an acre of officers and ten acres (approximately) of Soviet rank and file, all now disarmed, and he requested orders. Local belligerents made a beeline for Soviet weapons, equipment and stores, and more than one Soviet unit, compelled to defend itself against raiders, found itself in action with the support of some microcosm of the US forces to which it had surrendered. Soviet ships usually made for port and tied up. Many aircraft simply flew home, or as near to it as fuel allowed. Many thousands of men drifted away, leaving heavy weapons, equipment and stores where they lay for whoever chose to take them away.
7
Extract from